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Summary
Summary
This volume explores the state of American culture. It is composed of more than 30 chapters, each of which explores the topic of culture renewal in a different sector of life. Describing solutions as well as problems, it offers fair and politically balanced strategies for promoting cultural health.
Reviews (1)
Choice Review
The 34 authors of these 36 essays contend that an increasingly unhealthy culture threatens to undermine the US's long-standing democratic traditions. Among the authors' shared assumptions are that democratic institutions are inherently fragile; that democratic governance depends on virtuous citizens capable of exercising self-restraint for the common good; that one's basic character is a cultural product; that a toxic cultural environment contributes to the breakdown of American society; and that both popular culture and defective cultural elites are responsible for this breakdown. A final shared position--that culture can be altered for the better (and that the US's democratic experiment can be vindicated) if intellectuals and activists adopt long-term strategies of cultural renewal--offers a glimmer of hope in an otherwise gloomy argument. Essays on topics ranging from fatherhood to fashion, from John Witherspoon to Christopher Lasch, and from cultural homogenization to the cultural underpinnings of American democracy, are passionately argued and generally well written. Together they provide a good introduction to a neo-Tocquevillian cultural politics as advocated by the National Fatherhood Initiative and the Hudson Institute, among other groups. Recommended for all academic libraries. L. Maley III University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Table of Contents
Foreword | p. xi |
Introduction: The Moral and Intellectual Framework | p. 1 |
I. The Imperative of Building A Healthy Culture | |
The Cultural Underpinnings of America's Democratic Experiment | p. 41 |
The Culture's Impact on World Affairs | p. 59 |
The Culture's Impact on Social Pathologies | p. 70 |
The Culture: "Upstream" from Politics | p. 76 |
The Homogenization of Culture | p. 102 |
The Moral Grounds for Advancing Cultural Health: Whose Standards? | p. 115 |
II. Historical Models for Cultural Transformation | |
Victorian England: The Charity Aid Society | p. 139 |
William Wilberforce | p. 159 |
Nineteenth-Century America | p. 181 |
Antonio Gramsci and the Transformation of Institutions | p. 200 |
Oasis Strategies | p. 219 |
Radical Vision: Christopher Lasch and the Quest for Community | p. 226 |
The Communitarian Model | p. 246 |
Minister to Freedom: The Legacy of John Witherspoon | p. 260 |
Catholic Moral Teachings: Subsidiarity | p. 280 |
III. Strategies for Cultural Renewal | |
Mass Social Movements: Essays by Movement Organizers and Scholars | |
Fatherhood | p. 301 |
Character and Ethics | p. 311 |
Marriage | p. 323 |
Faith-based Charities | p. 332 |
The Reformation of Manners | p. 347 |
Teen Abstinence | p. 357 |
Courtship | p. 368 |
Sexual Ethics | p. 380 |
Community Revitalization | p. 394 |
The Demand Side of Television | p. 416 |
The Supply Side of Television and Film | p. 424 |
Technology and the Internet | p. 450 |
Fashion | p. 461 |
Reform of Professions and Elite Fields | |
The Professions | p. 477 |
Journalism | p. 485 |
Bioethics | p. 498 |
The Arts | p. 507 |
An Overview of Academia | p. 515 |
The Humanities | p. 527 |
Contributors | p. 538 |